BP Azerbaijan has declared force majeure on loadings of Azerbaijani crude from the Turkish port of Ceyhan, after a series of earthquakes on Monday, the company said on Wednesday.
The notice was issued to oil shippers following a temporary suspension of loading operations from the Ceyhan Marine Terminal (CMT), BP Azerbaijan spokesperson Tamam Bayatly told Reuters by email.
BP Azerbaijan operates the Azerbaijan and Georgia sections of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
BP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Azerbaijan uses the Turkish port of Ceyhan as its main crude export hub, with a flow of about 650,000 barrels per day (bpd).
The BTC terminal at Ceyhan was initially expected to resume on Feb. 8 or 9, shipping and trading sources told Reuters earlier in the week, as damage at the terminal was being assessed. A shipping agent said the control room at the terminal had been damaged.
The Iraqi crude pipeline to Türkiye’s Ceyhan oil export hub resumed flows on Tuesday evening and a tanker docked to load Iraqi crude at Ceyhan earlier in the day.
The Vallesina was shown at a jetty at the BOTAŞ Ceyhan terminal on Tuesday evening local time, based on Refinitiv Eikon ship tracking. A trading source said the vessel was given the all-clear to load Iraqi oil from storage.
The ministry of natural resources for Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said the pipeline restarted flows at 9:45 p.m. local time (6:45 p.m. GMT).
Before the halt, the KRG had been pumping about 400,000 bpd and Iraq's federal government was pumping 75,000 bpd through the Kerkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.
Flows had halted on Monday after the earthquakes that left at least 14,351 deaths and over 63,794 injured, according to the latest official figures.
Meanwhile, some 28,044 people evacuated from quake-hit regions in southern Türkiye, the country's disaster agency reported Thursday.
